Killfile

by Christopher Farnsworth

  We arrived at the meeting place, which was an abandoned convenience store. That surprised me. I didn’t know how modern Baghdad was before I got there—before the bombing started. I expected mud huts or maybe something from Aladdin. Instead, I found scenes from a straight-to-DVD zombie movie: deserted stores and buildings, empty streets and abandoned cars, like it was the end of the world.

  Cantrell checked his Rolex and then looked at me. “How many inside?” he asked.

  I was about to protest that I couldn’t possibly know. Then I realized I did. There were eight of them in the building. I could sense them, their nerves singing out high and clear. The queasy stomach of the youngest one, the lookout on the roof, who’d never been in a fight before. The persistent ache in the leg of their leader, from an old bullet wound that had never healed properly. Their impatience and tension and nervousness, buzzing like flies around all of their heads. I didn’t speak much Arabic—my lessons had been confined mainly to a few simple phrases and commands—but I could still read them. I understood the meaning, if not the words.

  “Eight men,” I said. “One on the roof. He’s signaled the others. They know we’re here.”

  “They have radios?”

  Again, I wanted to say, How should I know? But this time, I knew I could find out. “No,” I said after a moment. There was no sign of the spike in mental activity I’d come to recognize when people broke out of their inner thoughts and began talking. They were silent.

  Cantrell nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. He hoisted the case and got out of the Humvee. I followed.

  We were met at the door by one of the men carrying an M16. He escorted us inside. The other men stood behind the empty displays and shelves, using them as cover. They held a variety of weapons: a few M16s, like the man on the door; some old AKs; a couple of ancient Kalashnikovs. Cantrell and I each had our sidearms, and I had an H&K MP5 as well. But even if only half of their weapons worked, we were outgunned.

  Still, that was not supposed to be a problem. This was a friendly meeting. We were there to give them money, after all.

  It began about like you’d expect from a roomful of armed men. Their leader stood behind the counter, watching us with undisguised hostility. Cantrell was so obviously CIA that he might as well have had it tattooed on his forehead. The leader could remember when the CIA delivered cash and weapons to Saddam, and he had a headful of hard feelings about those days.

  But the temperature thawed considerably after Cantrell stepped over to the counter and heaved the case onto it. His Arabic was only slightly better than mine, but there’s something about opening a huge suitcase full of cash that transcends language barriers.

  The Iraqi leader took out a knife and sliced open the shrink-wrapped packets of bills. They’d been packed in a special facility ten miles west of Manhattan, completely untouched by human hands until that moment. He checked the faces on the stacks, flipping carefully through each one. Then he withdrew a single hundred, took out a highlighter, and marked it. He peered at it in front of a flashlight held by one of his men. I’d seen that back at home at Walmart: he was checking to make sure the hundred wasn’t counterfeit.

  He nodded, satisfied.

  That’s when we were all supposed to relax. And I did. I let down my guard, just a fraction of an inch, because I thought the hard part was over. I remember I started thinking about getting back to the Green Zone and wondering where I would sleep that night.

  But the Iraqis didn’t relax. Instead, I felt a surge of sudden tension, like a current of electricity had passed through them all at once. Their minds were on high alert, open and receptive, ready for one thing to trigger their next move. They were waiting on a phrase, I realized. One phrase. And once the leader said it, we were dead. I could feel them rehearsing the steps in their minds, like dancers waiting for the curtain to rise onstage.

  The Iraqi leader smiled and extended his hand to Cantrell. Cantrell was smiling too. I couldn’t believe that he didn’t see it. It couldn’t have been more obvious with flashing lights and sirens and balloons dropping from the ceiling and a big sign reading CONGRATULATIONS! YOU’VE JUST BEEN SCREWED!

  Then I felt the leader’s mind form the phrase, the signal that would tell his followers to kill us before we could make it out the door. He was already planning his ride back to his grimy little hideout in our Humvee.

  I was certain of it. I hadn’t questioned my talent in years. Not since I was a kid. And it was fairly screaming at me that this was about to go bad.

  But I still hesitated. If I went for the H&K at my side, then they would all start shooting, and Cantrell would definitely get hit in the cross fire. I froze up. I didn’t know what to do.

  The leader took it out of my hands. He kept smiling. He gave the word: “Anta lateef.” You’re very kind.

  I tackled Cantrell and took him to the ground. The bullet aimed for his back caught the Iraqi leader in the chest instead.

  There was a moment of shock and horror as the Iraqi leader slowly toppled over, his chest a bloody mess, an exit wound bigger than a dinner plate in his back.

  Then they all began shooting.

  Cantrell and I scrambled for cover. Bullets tore through the shelving, right by my head. I fired off a few rounds, but it was a small store and we were outnumbered. There was no way to the door.

  We were dead. No way around it. I looked to Cantrell, thinking maybe he had a plan, or possibly an airstrike hidden in his pocket. He looked back at me, waiting. He didn’t say a word. I scanned him.

  All I got was this:

  I wanted to scream at him. How the hell did he expect me to get us out of this? I wasn’t the one who walked us into an ambush. I wasn’t the guy in charge. I’d never even shot at a real, live human being before, and now I was caught between a bunch of trained killers. Only their reluctance to shoot each other kept us alive as we huddled behind the shelves.

  That was what gave me the idea. I’d never tried anything like it before. But if the alternative was dying, then what the hell: nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  I picked the brain of the nearest Iraqi. I put a picture of myself right into his field of vision, popping up to his left.

  He turned and fired, as if by reflex.

  And shot one of his own people.

  He froze as a dozen different competing thoughts and emotions ran through his mind at once. I could empathize with all of them: he was guilty, he was stunned, he was so sure it had been one of the infidel Americans.

  The last thing to go through his head was another bullet. I’d jumped out and pulled the same trick again. Another Iraqi fighter saw Cantrell’s face on the back of the first guy’s skull and fired.

  I did it again, and again. And again. Jumping in, messing with their perceptions, and jumping out again. Each one was convinced they had us dead in their sights. Right before they took a bullet from one of their friends.

  It lasted only a minute or so. Then it was just Cantrell and me. Alone in a store full of corpses.

  Cantrell stood carefully, gun drawn. When he saw none of them were even twitching, he got up and went to the counter. He closed and locked the case, then nodded to me.

  “You coming or what?” he asked.

  I was still in shock. I’d just used my talent to kill a whole roomful of men. I felt no guilt—they’d wanted to kill me. I felt elated that I was still alive. But I also felt every one of them die. It was like watching the lights of a house go out, one by one.

  I shook it off and stood up. I thought I was fine. I didn’t know it yet, but the darkness would wait for me.

  I looked at Cantrell, and for a moment, his guard was down. On purpose, I’m pretty sure. I read him like a book.

  “You knew they were going to try this.”

  “Of course I did. Question is, why didn’t you?”

  “I was following you,” I snapped.

  “And look where you ended up. You never should have walked in here. You ne
ver should have let me walk in here. You should have known what they had planned from the second you read them. You should have told me to turn the Humvee around and get the hell back to base.” He spoke with the exaggerated patience of an adult telling a child that there’s no such thing as Santa Claus.

  “But you knew,” I said. “And you came in here anyway.”

  He looked me right in the eyes. “If you didn’t survive this, you’d be no good to me anyway, John.”

  He didn’t have to say any more than that. Not out loud. But I knew what he meant, in precise detail. His commanders didn’t have any use for psychic soldiers who couldn’t really fight.

  Cantrell had always aimed for me to be an interrogator, just like the rest of his recruits. Like he said when we first met, he wanted us to pick the brains of our captured POWs, find out their secrets.

  His superiors didn’t see it that way. They didn’t want to put any of Cantrell’s special-ed students in a room with high-value detainees. They wanted more from us.

  During the Cold War, nobody really minded spending money and time on Cantrell’s psychics, even if they only made vague predictions about enemy troop movements and missile silos. Money and patience were nearly unlimited then. But with two actual wars going, there was a sudden demand for results. We had to prove we were worth the line item on our budget by actually using our talents in combat.

  That was the reason Cantrell had me with him. To prove that our abilities could be weaponized. And he was willing to risk both our lives in the process.

  I tried to keep some of what I was feeling from showing up on my face. I failed.

  “What are you looking so pissed about?” he said out loud. “You passed.”

  I was searching for a response when an angry burst of thoughts suddenly broke into my head.

  The lookout from the roof.

  He’d heard the gunfire and thought he would come down to see his friends celebrating over our bodies. Instead, he found them all dead.

  I felt the shock and rage burn through his mind, obliterating any concern for his own safety. He stepped out into the store from the back room, holding an AK-47 on me.

  I could have gotten him. He was even less experienced than I was. A kid, maybe a year younger than me. He was confused and angry, and the AK-47 is notoriously inaccurate. I would have nailed him before he got me. I’m sure of it.

  But Cantrell already had him. He dropped the Iraqi with a three-shot burst. I felt the kid’s life end before his body hit the floor.

  I stood there for a moment, looking stupid for the second time that day.

  Cantrell crossed the store, covering the dead kid with his weapon the entire time. He kicked the AK-47 away from the corpse, then rolled the body over with his foot, just to be sure.

  He scowled down and pointed at the kid’s chest. There were three neatly spaced holes in the kid’s shirt.

  “Look at that,” he said.

  I thought he was admiring his grouping, but he was talking about the shirt. Something from Polo or a knockoff. Hard to tell with the blood.

  “These fucking morons,” he said. “Where do they think their clothes and their movies and their music come from? Guarantee you this idiot was listening to Tupac or some shit on his headphones before he decided to take up arms against the infidels. They should have figured it out by now: they’re already living in America. We just haven’t changed the names on the maps yet.”

  He shook his head and straightened up. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  SIXTEEN HOURS LATER, we were back at Fort Bragg. Cantrell took me out and introduced me to good Scotch for the first time in my life. He told everyone in our unit who’d listen how I’d saved his ass. He told me he was proud of me.

  He might have been willing to let me die in that grimy little store in Baghdad. He played off my trust and inexperience. But he wasn’t lying. I read him. I know.

  Somehow it means more when you get a compliment from a total bastard. It’s like you had to pass a tougher exam to get the grade.

  ALL OF CANTRELL’S special-ed kids got put on combat missions after that, no matter what our talents. I’ll admit, some of us were useless in the field. There was one guy who could sense danger before it happened. In a war zone, that’s not a whole lot of help. He’d get ready to go out in a Humvee, and get hit with one of his premonitions of imminent death. At which everyone else in his squad would look at him with the sort of expression that says, No shit.

  They finally found a place for him in the entourage of high-ranking visitors. If he began to sweat, they knew it was time to head for a secure area. Once I saw him on TV, deep in the crowd while the president visited the troops.

  I got a lot of practical experience. I was attached to a unit that did search-and-recovery missions, looking for faces from the deck with pictures of high-value targets on each card. At first the other guys were skeptical. But nothing convinces people like saving their lives a few dozen times.

  In close quarters, I could tell you how many men were hiding inside an apartment building or a bombed-out storefront. I knew, instinctively, if a room was clear before we went through the door. It was harder for me to miss a shot than to make one: I could use my talent like radar, and aim my weapon for the center of the target, even through walls. It was impossible to get a sniper scope on me. I always felt it, that sudden prickle of another set of eyes focusing on me. When I hit the deck, everyone in my squad learned to do the same. That’s where I learned to trace a sniper’s gaze back to his nest, to find him based on his attention to me.

  After a while, Cantrell was able to push for more important, more sensitive missions. I was trusted with black ops, attached as a specialist to units that went deep into enemy territory to look for the guys hiding out under protection of the Taliban or foreign governments. We crossed borders that weren’t supposed to be crossed. We did questionable things, if any of us had been the kind to ask questions. We came back with captives: fresh meat wrapped and packed for Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and Bagram, as well as a dozen other places no one in the civilian world would ever know about.

  I went with them. I began picking their brains, just like Cantrell wanted from the very start.

  [11]

  The old mall is halfway through the process of being abandoned. The big stores have moved on to newer, shinier homes. The spaces that aren’t locked up are occupied by weird, off-brand franchises: a Chinese food/doughnut place; a cash-for-gold pawnshop; and, taking up an entire corner of the mall, a discount mattress store with an enormous, cheap vinyl banner over the old JCPenney sign. It’s like seeing insects feed on the body of a big, dying animal.

  Inside, the fountain is dry and there are only a few people drifting around. Half the lights are out.

  Kelsey and I walk inside the mattress store. A single saleswoman, heavy with sadness, sits behind a desk in the middle of all the beds. She waves but doesn’t get up. She thinks we might actually buy something—we still look like healthy consumers—but her knees hurt. Her back hurts. She worries about her next paycheck. There used to be two people on every shift. Now her manager comes in only every other day.

  I can barely screen out her long list of complaints. There’s too much already loaded up against my firewalls. I’m going to crash hard soon.

  I just have to hold it together for a little while longer.

  An old recording squawks to life, interrupting the bland pop music coming out of the ceiling speakers. The mall is closing in twenty minutes.

  I smile at the saleswoman, shrug, and Kelsey and I head for the exit. She barely looks in our direction. It’s easy to double back and duck behind a master-bedroom display set. It’s even easier to plant the suggestion that the saleswoman head for home without checking the floor one last time. She sets the burglar alarm and shuffles for the exit. As she does,
I read a short menu of the store’s security options from her memory. There are no motion detectors—they haven’t worked since JCPenney moved out. The owners are too cheap to spring for full-time patrols. Nobody cares about this place. It doesn’t have anything worth stealing. It barely has anything worth vandalizing. People can smell neglect. It sends them in the other direction, even if they’re not aware of it.

  The lights in the mall switch off. The steel shutters on the entrances go down. Locked inside, we’re as close to invisible as we can get for the night.

  Kelsey is huddled up on one of the mattresses, arms around her knees, staring at nothing. The events of the day are starting to catch up with her too.

  But there’s a question she’s been waiting to ask.

  “Can’t you get in touch with Sloan?” she says.

  There’s something plaintive in her mind when she says that, even though her voice remains firm. The betrayal still hurts. She thought Sloan was different. She thought he was her mentor. She didn’t believe me when I said that Sloan had abandoned us. She wants evidence. Or she wants me to at least try to reach out to him, to give him a chance to prove me wrong.

  “You’re the one who said he was completely cut off from the outside world,” I remind her.

  “You’re the superspy. I’m sure there’s some way you could contact him,” she says.

  She’s right. There are a half dozen ways I could contact someone in Switzerland who could get inside the conference and deliver a message to Sloan. If I were really motivated, I could make the trip myself and show up in his hotel room with his morning croissant and cappuccino.